Anyone who thinks that things can’t possibly get worse between the NHL and NHLPA only needs to wait a few minutes to be proven wrong. Every time it seems that negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement have bottomed out, someone grabs a shovel.

The explanation for the sudden change in lockout rules, which had prohibited players from any contact with their organizations, was explained by deputy commissioner and generally unfortunate fall-guy-for-bad-PR Bill Daly, as quoted by Yahoo’s Nick Cotsonika: “(Club executives) were directed to advise players to work through their union. We have no more specific response. We consider it a non-event.”

While it’s quite lovely that the NHL considers the NHL’s unilateral action to be unimportant, the 48-hour window—which came with no notification to or permission from the NHLPA —those on the other side of negotiations, to the surprise of no one, had a different viewpoint.

“(I) think it’s beyond the realm of immoral,” Scott Norton, the agent for Los Angeles Kings captain Dustin Brown, told Sporting News. Norton added that none of his clients, that he knew of, had spoken to their GMs or owners during the secret window.

Had the NHL alerted the NHLPA to its plans to open direct lines of communication between management and players, the 48-hour window might have been a good way to work toward a deal, with both sides able to engage in an open conversation. Instead, the NHL’s cloak-and-dagger tactics drove yet another wedge between two parties whose hopes for reaching a deal by Thursday to save an 82-game season appear slimmer than a supermodel stranded on a desert island.

By having executives “advise players to work through their union,” the NHL clearly hoped to fracture the support that Donald Fehr has enjoyed from his constituents as executive director of the NHLPA. If it was really about explaining the league’s proposal from last week, the NHL would have asked players to check NHL.com, where the details of that offer were posted.

Not that NHLPA members would have needed to check the league’s website anyway. The union has kept players informed from the beginning of negotiations, including with a smartphone app —key to reaching hockey players in 2012. Any players who want to take part in talks are free to do so.

The same cannot be said for the management side, where public comments on the CBA have been restricted to Daly or his boss, Gary Bettman, with threats of million-dollar fines for anyone else who makes a public peep. In fact, if anyone would be in position to provide labor updates in an icebreaking communication session, it would be players who have been part of the talks, informing their general managers—not the other way around.

With two days left until the NHL’s deadline to agree to a new CBA and start the regular season on Nov. 2, the question isn't whether the league and the NHLPA will come to a deal, but how the two sides will trust each other enough to do it.